Manufacturing competitiveness is increasingly dependent on the use of automatons in the construction of products; and modern assembly lines employ apparatus, often referred to as industrial robots, which are automated (for example, operate with a relatively high degree of self control) to perform various assembly steps of an overall product construction. Moreover, the current designs for such automated assembly apparatus aim towards "flexible" automation, which refers to the capability of a particular automated apparatus to be used, perhaps with some modifications, for the assembly of more than one type of product.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,094,043 provides an example of a prior art apparatus for assembling precision components of an acoustic device. This apparatus uses two jig structures that precisely position and hold respective components and a gauge element that accurately aligns the jig structures, one to the other, before the jig structures are moved to interfit and attach their supported components. These jig structures and the gauge element are themselves highly precise in dimension and expensive to fabricate. Also, they are relatively unique to the particular acoustic device disclosed. Further, the overall assembly procedure requires operator intervention to align the gauge element with one of the jig structures so that the assembly procedure is not subject to a high degree of automation. Thus, improvements are desired over the '043 patent approach to enable automated assembly of precision components, with a good degree of product "flexibility".
The assembly of optical lens elements with their cylindrical housings, commonly called "barrels", provides another good example of a procedure requiring the accurate interfitting of precision components. The traditional approach for such an assembly is to mount the lens element and lens barrel into complimentary precision fixtures. The fixtures are then moved to a precise interfit relation that correctly mounts the lens element in the barrel. As in the previous example, the lens and barrel fixtures must be accurately dimensioned and are expensive to fabricate. Again, the fixtures are relatively unique to the particular lens and barrel configurations and do not have a good degree of product "flexibility".